Wal-Mart Said to Tell Vendors Not to Use Amazon Cloud Computing

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is telling some technology companies that if they want its business, they can’t run applications for the retailer on the cloud-computing service offered by archrival Amazon.com Inc., Amazon Web Services.

Amazon’s has become the dominant provider of rented on-demand, web-based computing power and storage, putting competitors like Netflix Inc. in the position of relying on a corporate rival as they move to the cloud, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Wal-Mart keeps most of its data on its own servers and uses services from AWS competitors such as Microsoft Corp.’s Azure.

“It shouldn’t be a big surprise that there are cases in which we’d prefer our most sensitive data isn’t sitting on a competitor’s platform,” Wal-Mart spokesman Dan Toporek told the WSJ.

Other large retailers also have requested that service providers move away from Amazon Web Services, according to technology vendors that work with retailers.

Retailers “are all very particular, and some are more particular than others,” Kevin Howard, CEO of Adroit Worldwide Media Inc., a retail-technology provider that works with sensitive data including automated inventory tracking and provides pricing-content management, told the WSJ. “There are retailers that have specifically requested that we sit on Azure,” he said, declining to name them.

Meanwhile, Amazon.com keeps pushing into Canada by beefing up hiring and expanding its profitable data center business north of the border, Bloomberg News reported.

The internet giant will hire 200 people in its Toronto office to work on sales and technology, taking total headcount to 800 in the city and 2,000 including warehouse staff throughout Ontario, the provincial government said in a statement Tuesday.

“We’re going to continue to listen to what our customers are asking us to do, to continue to invest in Canada,” Jeffrey Kratz, head of Amazon Web Services in Canada and Latin America, said in an interview in Toronto on Tuesday. “We’re just getting started.”

Last week, Amazon responded in the other direction with its $14 billion purchase of grocery chain Whole Foods Market Inc.

The lines that divided traditional retail from e-commerce are disappearing and sector dominance will no longer be bound by e-commerce or brick-and-mortar, but by who is better at both, Reuters reported.

Amazon's purchase of Whole Foods is forecast to disrupt the $700 billion U.S. grocery industry, a traditional area of retailing that stands on the precipice of a ferocious price war. German discounters Aldi and Lidl are battling Wal-Mart, which controls 22 percent of the U.S. grocery market, with each vowing to undercut whatever price the others offer.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is telling some technology companies that if they want its business, they can't run applications for the retailer on the cloud-computing service offered by archrival Amazon.com Inc., Amazon Web Services.